


Exit Music

by natlet



Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-30
Updated: 2012-11-30
Packaged: 2017-11-19 23:03:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natlet/pseuds/natlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Drop your cut, and run.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exit Music

**Author's Note:**

> Written after 5x12 and before 5x13 aired - I guess it's kind of an AU now?  
> \--  
> Spoilers up to and including 5x12.
> 
> This show hurts me in the heart and I had to fix it. 99% chance this is going to get jossed with 5x13, but I accept that.
> 
> Title's from Radiohead (again).

"You're done in this club, but you play this right, and you might live," Jax says. "Drop your cut, and run."

Hearing the words that have been swimming around Tig's head for days coming out of Jax's mouth - that's enough to make Tig shrug the leather off his shoulders. The gun is sorta overkill.

*

Tig doesn't know where to go, so he goes to Clay. 

He spots Gemma coming out of Clay's place when he's halfway down the street. By the time he gets there, she's in her car, pulling away from the curb. "Gem," he calls, unbuckling his helmet, but she doesn't stop, the brake lights flickering as she rolls through the stop sign in the middle of the block. There's someone else in the car with her; Nero, he assumes. Tig waves as she turns the corner, hangs his helmet on his bike, and goes inside.

Clay's on the couch, elbows on his knees. He doesn't look up when Tig comes in, and Tig closes the door gently, comes around to sit next to him. "Everything okay?" 

"Yeah." Clay turns, and Tig watches him take in the missing cut. "What happened to you?" 

"Jax." Tig doesn't know how to explain it, but it's Clay, so he probably doesn't have to. "I think I gotta get out of town for a while."

Clay says, "I got a plan." 

*

For a minute, it looks like the Irish might not go along with it. "Where's your wife?" says Galen. 

"She ain't coming," Clay says. He puts a hand on Tig's shoulder, and Tig can feel each individual finger like Clay's burning his prints into Tig's skin. "Tig's going instead." 

"That's not what we agreed on," Galen says.

Clay says, "I know." 

The assholes with the AKs shift them a little higher and Tig's okay with it, he's okay with dying here, now - but instead Galen nods, and the guys step aside, let Tig follow Clay to the car.

It's just a cargo plane, huge and echoing. The seats fold down from the walls. Tig closes his eyes as they take off, and he can mostly shut out the noise and the building headache and the chill across his back from his missing cut, but he can still feel Clay's arm pressing against his own. 

* 

They get set up in a shitty little apartment. There's only one bed, and the paint's peeling in the barely-there kitchen, and the whole place stinks of rot. 

Clay's pissed; probably figured he'd get treated a little better, after all the business he'd done with the IRA. He storms around kicking at tables and slamming doors, leaving scorch marks on the edge of the chipped porcelain sink with the cigars that Tig's pretty sure he isn't supposed to be smoking.

Tig finds an extra blanket and a pillow in a closet, and sets himself up on the couch. Whatever, he thinks. It's only for a couple months.

*

There's fuck-all to do. Clay doesn't seem too eager to show his face on the streets - Tig isn't sure if he's worried about leftover heat from the trouble he'd found in the Belfast charter, or the new shit with Jax - and Tig's not about to leave him unprotected just now. Galen sends his boys around every couple days with food and beer and smokes; the first morning, Tig slips them some extra cash, and after that they bring weed too. Mostly, he and Clay just sit around, getting drunk and watching TV. They don't talk much. That's okay with Tig; he doesn't know yet what he wants to say. 

* 

Almost a week in, he runs into Clay in the narrow hallway, middle of the night, on the way back from the bathroom. There isn't room to go around him, and for a few seconds they just sort of stare, sleep-stupid and lost. He can't help seeing the dark mottled patch on Clay's arm, where the Reaper used to be.

"What're you fucking looking at," says Clay. His voice is rough, jagged and cracking. Tig can't remember the last time he heard Clay speak - couple days ago maybe, on the phone with Galen.

"Nothing," Tig says. "Nothing, man." 

Clay steps back into the bedroom to let him pass, and Tig goes back to the couch. He wonders if he should call Gemma in the morning, if it'd be safe. This time of year, the sun takes forever to rise. He doesn't hear Clay get up again. 

*

So, okay, Tig thinks, watching the hooker count out her fee from his rapidly disappearing pile of cash - maybe going out hadn't been the best idea he'd ever had. But he feels a little better, at least, and it beat sitting around that fucking hole of an apartment with what was left of his best friend. 

It's dark again outside by the time Tig steps out of the hotel lobby. Back at the apartment, he finds a mostly-empty bottle of whiskey on top of the TV and Clay pacing, gun in hand, stinking drunk. He drops the gun on the table when Tig comes through the door, and the heavy sound of it hitting the wood makes Tig jump like it had gone off. "Where the fuck have you been?" 

Tig blinks. "Getting my dick sucked," he says. "Is that a problem?"

"You forget where we are?" Clay says. "Why we're here?" He comes over, gets right in Tig's face, and Tig braces for the punch - but it doesn't come, and he looks at Clay then, through the haze of whiskey hanging almost visible in the air between them. 

Soon as he does, he wishes he hadn't; Clay's unshaven, his skin pale, the booze making his eyes wide and unfocused. He looks old, old and tired and afraid, and Tig thought he'd been dealing with all this okay, but he's not, he's really not, neither of them are. "I'm sorry, brother," he says, instead of what he should say, which is go fuck yourself. "I'm sorry." 

Feels like a long time passes before Clay's eyes drop to Tig's chest, where the sergeant's patch should have sat. "You and me," Clay says, "all we got left is each other. We both gotta get right with that. You go out there again, you watch your back," and then he leaves Tig alone, shutting himself back up in the bedroom, taking the gun off the table as he goes. 

Tig reaches for the whiskey bottle, good mood from the blowjob fading fast. He takes a pull from the bottle, another, then carries it down the hall and into the bathroom. The shower's hot and he braces himself on the wall and drops his head, stands and lets the water fall on his shoulders, run in scalding trickles down his back, across his chest. He tries to jerk off, but his dick's not cooperating, so he climbs out and dries off and goes to get high, instead.

He turns on the television, finds some nature show, rolls himself a couple joints and stretches out on the couch. One joint burns down to ash, then the other, and he rolls a third while he watches a lion take apart a gazelle on the TV. He finishes the whiskey. Clay doesn't come back out.

* 

Tig wakes up sore, every muscle in his body twisted and cramping from too many nights spent on the damn couch. He gets himself upright, plucks the half a joint he didn't smoke last night from the ashtray and lights it up, groaning as he stretches his legs. 

"Morning," Clay says behind him. Tig doesn't turn around, but Clay comes to sit next to him anyway. "Can I see that?" 

Tig holds the joint out silently. The sleeve of Clay's t-shirt rides up his arm as he reaches for it; here in the light, Tig can see bruising around the edges of his blacked-out tattoo, the skin puckered and cracked. "Shit," he says, unable to stop himself. He hadn't realized how bad it looked. Hap had gone all-out.

Clay sits back quick, hunching his shoulder until the fabric covers the worst of it again, uses the other hand to take a drag off the joint. He won't meet Tig's eyes. "I wanna fix this," he says, smoke pouring from his mouth. "You and me, I know we went bad. I know it's on me. I just need a chance to make it right, brother." 

He means to say _fuck off,_ but what comes out instead is, "You had one. You blew it." 

"Tig - " Clay shifts, turning toward him, and for a second Tig's sure Clay's going to touch him - and it shakes him, a little, how bad he wants to feel Clay's hands on him. He's used to being with the club, always someone there to sling a friendly arm around his neck, always someone's shoulder he can lean on at the bar, and when Clay doesn't come any closer he has to work hard at not closing the gap himself. "I shoulda let you in. I should never have locked you out in the first place."

"So why did you?" 

"You think Jax woulda let you walk away if you'd pulled the trigger on Piney? You think he woulda stopped Ope for you?" 

"Maybe it wouldn't have come to that," Tig says. 

"It had to come to that." Clay holds the joint out; when Tig doesn't take it, he stubs it out in the ashtray. "You know I need you by my side," he says. "I always have."

Tig wants to believe him so fucking bad. "Yeah, okay," he says, standing. "I'll be back later." His boots are by the door, and he bends to pick them up.

"We can make it good again, Tiggy." 

"I'll think about it," Tig says, and he lets the door slam behind him. He'll put his boots on outside.

* 

Tig finds a bar - a _pub_ , whatever - and gets to work. 

The bartender's an asshole, cuts him off after just a couple of hours, so Tig finds another place to get drunk. And then another, until in the fourth or fifth some guy stumbles into him, and Tig stops himself just before he swings. "Outside," he says instead, leaning close so nobody else can hear him. 

The guy nods, leads him out to the sidewalk, down an alley. Tig slips his rings off into his pockets as he goes, pulls his gloves on, and he even lets the guy get in the first swing.

Tig hunkers down, tucking his elbows in tight as the guy just goes to town. For a few seconds it's good, it's really good - the steady, solid impact of fists on flesh, skin splitting open under knuckles, his vision tinged red - and then the guy staggers, just enough to leave Tig an opening, and Tig goes for his knife.

* 

He stuffs the body into a dumpster, covers it up with a couple bags of garbage, gets the fuck out. It's sloppy, but it's okay for now. He'll come back later and clean up. He's not far from the apartment. He'll take care of it later, when it's dark. It's okay for now. He's okay. 

*

Clay's yelling before he's even through the door. "What the fuck are you thinking?"

"What? I - " 

Clay throws the burner phone he's been using. It explodes against the wall next to Tig's head. "The Irish are cleaning up your mess for you. Galen ain't happy. You're gonna get yourself fucking killed."

"Yeah," Tig says, "and it would suck if I died before I made you any more money, huh." 

"Jesus Christ, Tiggy," Clay says. He goes into the kitchen, opens a beer, drops into a chair at the table. "It's not - look, you gotta keep your head down. Don't think Jax has no pull around here. Just keep your shit together for a few more weeks, and - " 

"And what," says Tig, "We go home, we run guns behind the club's back, and as soon as you get enough cash to keep Gemma happy, you kill me?" 

Clay is quiet for a long time, spinning the beer on the tabletop. "Me and Gemma are through," he says eventually.

"I - what?" Tig frowns. "Why? I thought you two were - " 

"That was Jax's doing."

"Shit," Tig says. "Shit, man, I - I'm sorry." 

"Yeah," Clay says. "Me too." 

He doesn't really want to stay, but he bends to unlace his boots anyway. When he stands back up, Clay's got the gun on the table between them. "What's going on?"

"I'm not gonna kill you for voting honest," Clay says, real soft. "You were right - I earned that. Far as I'm concerned, all that club shit, that's in the past." He turns the butt of the gun toward Tig, pushes it slowly across the table. "But if you wanna make good on that vote, do it now."

He can't seem to stop looking between Clay and the gun, even though neither one's moving. "Holy shit, Clay," he says, and before he can stop himself he's going around the table, dragging Clay up and out of his chair, pulling him close, anything to get away from that already-dead look in Clay's eyes. "My hands are just as bloody as yours, brother." 

"All the years I gave that club," Clay says, into Tig's shoulder.

"I know." 

"There's nothing left." 

And Tig gets it, he knows he's getting jerked around, but he can't just let that go, so he fists a hand in Clay's shirt and says, "You still got me, Clay, I'm still here," and when Clay turns his head and kisses him, Tig doesn't hesitate, doesn't stop himself, just kisses Clay back.

* 

He smooths his hands across Clay's back, traces the edge of the healing tattoo with his fingers, then his tongue. Clay murmurs low in his throat, muscles shifting under the skin as he turns. His arms wrap tight around Tig's shoulders, drawing him in, and Tig presses against him, greedy, touch-starved. It's only a few steps across the room to the bed; Clay sits on the edge, reaches for Tig's hands, touches his lips to each of the initials scratched into the wristbands, breath warm against Tig's skin. Tig cups his hands around Clay's face and leans in to kiss him. There'll be time for the scars later. 

*

Tig stretches as he wakes, groaning happily as his joints pop, muscles uncurling. He's too old for that couch bullshit. 

"Morning," Clay says behind him, and Tig rolls over. Clay's sitting up, the newspaper open across his knees. "The Irish cleaned up for you," he says, waving the corner of the paper at Tig. "Nothing in here." 

"Y'know, I had that under control," Tig says.

Clay laughs softly. "Yeah, I know." Tig closes his eyes again, listens to the rustling of the pages turning; after a minute, Clay says, "You okay?" 

When he looks, Clay's studying the paper carefully. "Yeah," Tig says. "You?" 

Clay folds the paper closed, lets it fall. "Yeah," he says. He slides down the bed, rests his head on the pillow. Reaches out, and when Tig doesn't move away, he puts his hand on Tig's arm, over his tattoo, rubbing his thumb across the Reaper's scythe. "The Irish probably know someone who can take care of this. You gonna be good with that?" 

"Fine," Tig says. "My club's dead." 

"I'm sorry." 

"Don't be. That shit's in the past." Tig shifts a little, slow at first, then tucks himself close, fingers spreading across Clay's side. "But we can make it good again," he says against Clay's collarbone.

"Yeah," says Clay, and he laughs again, strong arms wrapping Tig up, "yeah, we can."


End file.
